


Helen and Michael's Excellent Adventure

by tihsho



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, MLM/WLW Hostility, Multi, Paranoia, The Distortion, brief non graphic sex scene like RIGHT at the start, centered on a woman character tma fandom please, fuckksake i forgot to add a summary at first, hope this makes sense i dont really know what it is, my take on the michael and helen dynamic distortion duo, the chapter titles are a joke but im doing it unironically, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26584555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tihsho/pseuds/tihsho
Summary: It annoys Helen deeply that Michael Shelley is not dead.She's certain he's still there, existing within the Distortion, influencing her actions in ways she can't understand. It would be a delicious situation if it wasn't, well, her - if it didn't threaten everything about the awful, wonderful existence she now leads. So she's going to gouge him out of herself, even if she has to use the help of the beings she hates most to do it. Even if it destroys her from the inside.
Relationships: Helen Richardson & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Helen Richardson & Michael Shelley, helen richardson/background female characters (brief)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Helen and Michael's Excellent Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something I’ve been thinking about a bit. Probably won’t be very long or super in-depth, and I’m not sure it uhhh makes sense, but I need a break from my original projects and I’m gay for Helen so why not.

Helen isn’t sure what compels her to go.

She started out looking in certain corners of the internet for this sort of thing. Places where people shared… fantasies, attractions to the paranormal that were decidedly  _ not  _ academic. Some of them had stories that were actually true, and Helen does respect getting off to a near death experience with a vampire instead of weeping about it to Magnus. It ordinarily wouldn’t interest her beyond a passing curiosity. Sex hasn’t been something she’s even considered since her divorce, especially not since her… twisting.

So she isn’t here because  _ she  _ wants to - to fuck a perverted shut-in from the internet, but, well,  _ something _ does. And she is here. This street outside some woman’s apartment, a few messages behind her. She’s crammed herself into a form most resembling sense and normalcy, resembling herself  _ before _ , and she’s here.

Something inside of Helen doesn’t want to be with a woman - something  _ foreign,  _ but somehow instinctual - but  _ she  _ does. She’s at a strange sort of impasse, so she falls back on past experience. It can’t have been that long, can it? She must still know what to do.

At the door, the person laughs at her, shyly brushes her hand. She invites Helen to her place, dances around the fantasies she’s already unpacked before an audience of anonymous strangers online, searching for companionship; and Helen plays along until the door closes and she can show the stranger how much  _ more  _ of her fantasy she’s about to get. Helen’s form unravels, distorts - the woman’s eyes widen, she stumbles back, her face breaks in horror until Helen reassures her with a touch. The two of them press together. The dynamic is different than any Helen has been part of before. She fits… differently, moves differently. But as it picks up, as her heartbeat gets faster her breaths heavier her motions more desperate, she feels the human dynamic of her slip even further away, the stitches tear in her sense and existence, and even more so, as the right spots are hit and her muscles tense and the sensation twists, feeds back, amplifies -  _ she  _ slips away, and for half an abstract moment there is no she, no Helen. The disjointed shape of the thing that was once Helen is, briefly, taller, lighter, and more lyrical. The impression of long blond hair falls over the farce of the thing’s face. It shouts, ecstatic, in a voice like fingernails breaking glass.

And then it comes down, and Helen is there again, holding her body over her companion’s. The woman looks up at her with wide eyes that are no longer any particular color. As she shifts off of her, she can see that the woman’s skin is laced with light swirls, and some aspect of her that isn’t so obvious as looks, something at her core, now fundamentally no longer makes sense.

Helen, clothed, her knees shaking as she walks to the door, one that wasn’t there before, thinks the experience will probably have been worth it for this one, even if certain things like time and skin take a while to come back. Not that she really cares if it isn’t.

Any amusement quickly dissipates once she’s back in her halls, surrounded by the beautiful nonsense of the space and patterns. Her awareness spreads throughout the whole of the network, the whole of  _ her,  _ but no relief comes with it. She  _ is  _ these halls, but there’s something in them that isn’t her, she’s as certain now, after her little excursion, as she ever could be. It’s much like the feeling of being unable to trust one’s own body, knowing there’s some uncontrolled aspect festering inside the self. And that would be such a  _ delightful  _ feeling if not for what it means… it forces a meaning here, in the body of unmeaning, or at least in the mind of Helen.

It annoys Helen deeply that Michael Shelley is not dead.

The idea started as a vague, almost itching feeling. A feeling both in her mind and in a place, a specific place, within the tunnels. Analogous to suddenly noticing a change in one’s body, fingers probing a lump that couldn’t have been there before - a creeping feeling of  _ is that right? That can’t be right, can it?  _ that would be, to Helen, absolutely delicious if it wasn’t so, well,  _ concerning _ . Helen has lived in a state of constant paranoia ever since she was first taken into those twisting halls, and she usually quite enjoys it; the fear, it… twists, fractures, redirects within her head, panic becomes pleasure, confusion excitement, delirium euphoria, and really a part of her  _ is _ thrilled by the idea that Michael is alive when it first takes root, but a larger part of her, beyond her warped emotions, knows she needs to end it, Michael, before he ruins the joy in the awful space of existence she now inhabits.

The doubt is so subtle she doesn’t know when it started. Of course it’s not obvious at first. That’s why she knows it’s true. All evidence that follows only intensifies her paranoia, as it should, though there is of course no concrete proof - only the subjective imitation thereof. There is no proof tonight even happened, because proof of Helen cannot exist at all.

So the evidence comes in the form of these moments. Moments where Helen isn’t… Helen, whatever Helen is now. Moments where she finds herself following through on impulses that aren’t even in character for the collection of contradictions she now is. Moments where she… knows things that Helen should not. _ Is _ things that Helen is not. And feels things that Helen would not, see:

She is  _ obsessed  _ with the Archivist.

Helen… would think about him, yes, if left to her own devices. There’s a sad little part of her - sadness becomes disgust becomes amusement - that remembers how he tried to help her, just before. Listened to her. Believed her. Wanted her… not to meet the fate she met, the fate she twisted and tore and consumed.

A larger part just desperately wants to watch him hurt.

Helen wanders within herself, trying to find where she  _ knows  _ Michael is, and there is nothing. The day she… beat him,  _ became  _ him, she was sure he was gone. He didn’t drag his body away from the place of their confrontation. His body didn’t even exist anymore. Never did. There is no place that he, in any sense of the word, could  _ be. _

If there was, she would  _ unmake  _ it.

The thought that she could just _ ignore this  _ pops into her head, and that means even more that she is right.

She goes to Annabelle Cain.

She gets on well with Annabelle. Their gods do. The only real difference between the two of them is that the Spiral is more upfront with its lies and paranoia. With Helen, you get what you pay for, which is a painful and terrifying pocket dimension of unreality. 

They sit across from each other in a coffee shop. It’s Helen’s preferred way to meet for business now. Annabelle, stirring a complicated drink with a heart whipped into the top, looks her over with oddly shining eyes. The skin around them is shadowed in odd places, and the back of her jacket shifts when her arms are still on the table as if there’s more beneath it than just a human body. She’s not making much of an effort to conceal the extras. But truth and lies blend around Helen, and in function, Annabelle is the facsimile of a normal woman. Helen’s reflection in the window as she speaks is put together all wrong. When she looks away, the corners of her eyes swear it is blond.

“I’ll admit I’m fascinated by your little dispute,” Annabelle says slowly, tapping her fingernails against the rim of her cup. “The nature of young Michael’s… insertion… into the Distortion had many interesting implications in itself. As did your takeover, of course, though power struggles for existing positions in our line of work are common, not to belittle your efforts, of course.” Her mouth stretches in a slight smile. “But though the Distortion insisted it was only itself, I always did wonder how much of Michael Shelley the man was infused into Michael the creature.”

“Michael was in denial of his extant humanity. I’m not,” Helen says. She ordered her own coffee, and a line is forming at the till while the staff fail to make sense of it. “I took the place of the bastard child of human and falsehood. I’m mortal. It’s all I can be, what makes me different from just a being of delusion. If I am mortal this way, so is he.” She tilts her head, not smiling but showing her teeth, and something cracks that isn’t a bone. “I know I killed him, Annabelle, so why is he there?”

Annabelle shrugs.“You can’t be understood.” She picks up her mug. “Let’s be clear: I want you to keep me updated on where this goes. It could be useful. But right now, I have nothing I could do with you.”

It’s a lie - she always has something. Helen doesn’t know where she fits into Annabelle’s scheming, or if that scheming, instead of just the vague threat of it, even exists at all. She can never be sure. That’s why they get on so naturally.

Most of the time. “And what you’re doing  _ without  _ me is none of my business.”

Annabelle leers. “All in time, Helen. It will all work out for us.” She sips at the froth of her mug. The shape of the foam heart twists around her mouth, bleeding, and its diluted edges take a form like many reaching limbs. “Just trust me.”

Helen does appreciate the touch, but it reminds her why she never really likes to spend much time around the other avatars. Especially around Annabelle, with her utter reliance on what other people  _ think  _ she’s doing, the posturing can get so… campy.

And she loves camp, of course, but not so much in  _ other _ people.

Helen takes a break from thinking about Michael Shelley, and from all the messy dynamics of the high school social club that is the avatars, for a while after that. She tries to, at least. Her doors smash through the lives of a dozen people. She invites them into herself, slams down around them like a venus flytrap without the honey. She’s well fed, with a much more sustainable model than many of the others. Her flies last a long time, wandering and screaming and scratching at her walls, trapped in a space and time so twisted that starvation offers them no escape.

She enjoys this. But she wonders. She notices herself examining herself, which is awful and painful to do. She’s meant to be unknown by definition, but is  _ she  _ unknown, or is it something else? How does she know the things she does - how to lure a child into her embrace, how to keep herself subtle enough to slowly drive a man to madness? She never learned these things, she always knew, ever since she became what she is. And there are other things ingrained in her that are not her own. A deep, unwaverable discomfort with the cold; a… mercy, for the young, for the kind, for the ones already caught up in lies that aren’t her own; and most of all, most fun, a deep and consuming hatred of the Archives.

The skew of her thoughts toward the Archivist, though she often finds herself confused of which... one.

So it isn’t long before she ends up in the Archives. As much as she hates the concept of unchangeable destinies, she feels as though her halls have been twisting in this direction ever since they became hers.

If they ever have been. If  _ she  _ ever has been entirely herself.

And it’s that knowledge that she  _ isn’t,  _ that she  _ can’t  _ be herself, that drives her to the NotThem.

The beast is raging when she finds them. They’ve taken out half of the tunnel wall, and Helen’s door materializes atop a scattering of rubble. She sprawls across a large chunk of stone and waits to be noticed.

Once their not-eyes land on her, the creature flies into an even hotter rage. Explosive blows break chunks off the stones around Helen. She doesn’t dodge, instead just makes it that she isn’t where she is, laughing, and none of the attacks land. The NotThem charges after her like a feral animal, and it’s very entertaining, but they quickly tire of the game and come to a glaring halt, their disproportionate form crouched against the tunnel wall.

Helen’s laughter echoes discordantly around the tunnel for a few seconds after she’s stopped. “Was that good for you?”

The NotThem snarls. “What are you doing here? You just want to laugh at me some more?”

The question strikes Helen oddly.  _ Why?  _ She knows her reasoning, but… she’s suddenly very aware of the Archives above them, a layout held more securely in her mind than it should be after her single visit to the place.

It doesn’t show on her face. “I have a problem. I want to know if you can do anything about it.”

“You want  _ my  _ help?” A laugh bursts from their indistinct lips. But then they pause, look at her, frown.

“I’m not myself. You’re not yourself,” Helen says. “It does seem like your area.”

A smile smears across the NotThem’s face. If Helen was close enough, she thinks she’d be able to see their pupils dilating. “Ah,” they breathe. “Ah, I can taste it now.”

Helen’s lip curls. “As happy as I am for you, I didn’t come here to offer you a snack.”

“No.” They shake their head, sniff, grin. “You know, I’d say it’s more your flavor, if, well.” Seeing Helen’s unamused - though perpetually smiling - expression, they shrug and say, “No, I can’t do anything about it. Not my... domain.”

“That’s all you had to say, love.”

“It’ll have to be you. Unless you can find something powerful enough to kill him,” and the NotThem smiles, shark teeth in rows that seem so fundamentally wrong, and says, “and if it can kill him, it can kill  _ you,  _ too.”

Helen’s scowl twists into a laugh. She laughs loud, echoing, prolonged - at least half a minute of the awful sound, and it didn’t really have a purpose but it fulfilled one anyway, making the NotThem skitter back almost unconsciously until their back’s against a wall.

They watch her with guarded, glittering eyes. “Why?” they ask, tone unidentifiable. “Why do you even care about his life? You know he’s there, but it seems like you can’t really do much about it. Besides, he’s not even…  _ doing  _ anything.”

Oh, that’s - that’s funny, almost. Annabelle hadn’t had to ask, but the NotThem must need things spelled out much more than her.

“Because I  _ want _ to kill him,” Helen laughs. “That’s what this whole thing is about. I want him dead, and all I’m trying to find is the _ how _ .”

The NotThem’s mouth twists. “Don’t let your little revenge mission distract you too much. We have bigger things to worry about now, all of us. Bigger things coming, if you believe Annabelle, and if not... can’t you feel it?”

Bigger things are always so boring. 

_ Revenge? _

Helen’s smile stretches wider. “I really, really cannot express to you how much I don’t care.”

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for anything that doesn’t work with the canonical timeline. I have dumbass syndrome and I can’t keep track of everything over all 180+ episodes lmao  
> I write fanfic in order to practice my writing skills and engage with people so I appreciate any and all feedback! If you comment I will show up in your time of greatest need to repay my life debt to you.  
> Talk to me on Tumblr: @falseficus (main - random bullshit) or @mosscreates (creative stuff)


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